In Depth DaVinci Resolve Video Editing Tutorial for Mac and PC (2026)
A 1h51m walkthrough that edits one vertical talking-head reel twice: a seven-step beginner cut, then an advanced pass with keyframes, cutouts, and a clone.
Posted
1 years ago
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Tutorial
educational
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515.3K
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57 · 43
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
DaVinci Resolve stops being intimidating once you live on the Edit page and run every video through the same seven-step order: frame and grade, cut dead space, punch in, B-roll, transitions, captions, music.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
You just installed the free version of DaVinci Resolve, opened it once, saw seven pages along the bottom, and closed it again.
You shoot talking-head reels or YouTube videos on a phone or mirrorless camera and want a repeatable edit order instead of improvising each time.
You already cut in Resolve but have never touched keyframes, alpha masks, or the Color page beyond dropping a LUT.
You want to know exactly which features cost money (Studio) before deciding whether the free version is enough for social content.
SKIP IF…
You edit in Premiere or Final Cut and have no plan to switch. The shortcuts and page layout are Resolve-specific.
You want a deep Color page or Fusion tutorial. Color gets ten minutes of LUT plus lift, gamma, gain, offset, and Fusion is never opened.
You need a short reference clip. This is a bookmark-and-return guide, not a five-minute answer.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
DaVinci Resolve looks intimidating because it has seven pages, but about 95 percent of an edit happens on the Edit page. The tutorial proves it by cutting one vertical reel from raw footage to export in a fixed seven-step order: frame and grade, cut dead space, punch in every other clip, add B-roll with in and out points, add a few restrained transitions, add captions, add music, then export with subtitles burned in. The advanced pass layers on custom text with a pop transition, keyframed zooms with curves, an alpha-output mask that cuts out the subject, a clone built from two masked takes, film burns on Screen, and sound effects timed to each animation's apex. Only auto captions and animated subtitles require the paid Studio version.
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Host handoff to Connor, follow-along footage on Google Drive, free starter pack, and the three-part plan: layout tour, level one edit, advanced edit.
02:07 – 14:30
02 · Edit page tour
Seven pages explained, why the Edit page is 90 to 95 percent of the work, importing by file menu or folder drag, timeline playback with JKL and arrows, blade tool and Command+B, inspector, preview zoom, playback resolution, project settings for resolution and frame rate, vertical timeline toggle, dual viewer mode.
14:30 – 23:20
03 · Step 1: Frame and color grade
Zoom and reposition to hide a lamp, jump to the Color page, install a Sony LUT into the LUT folder, then tweak lift, gamma, gain, and offset with the mountain analogy.
23:20 – 26:25
04 · Step 1: Audio levels
Open the mixer, read minus 20 to minus 30 as too low, normalize to true peak minus 1, or raise gain manually, then add a compressor on the Fairlight page.
26:25 – 30:34
05 · Step 2: Cut dead space
Remove script-reading pauses with blade cuts, ripple-delete gaps, Command+Shift+bracket shortcuts, and tighten the spacing between lines so delivery sounds natural.
30:34 – 33:09
06 · Step 3: Punch in every other clip
Scale the second take slightly, match the eye line, then copy and Paste Attributes onto every other clip to fake a second camera.
33:09 – 41:17
07 · Step 4: B-roll
Drag a folder into the media pool, set in and out points with I and O, drop on the track above, Option-click to delete unwanted audio, grade log B-roll with the same LUT, slow to 50 percent, rotate 90 degrees.
41:17 – 45:25
08 · Before and after snap transition
Pull two snaps from the same clip, align the cut to the word effects frame by frame, and quickly grade the remaining clips from the Color page thumbnail strip.
45:25 – 51:52
09 · Step 5: Transitions
Why not every cut needs one. Push transition set to 12 frames, direction preset, motion blur, ease in and out. The free pack arrow transition cut at the full-cover frame. Copy and paste a transition between clips.
51:52 – 59:57
10 · Step 6: Captions
Manual subtitle track in the free version, track-level font, stroke, shadow, and background, per-caption overrides, then Studio's AI auto captions and animated subtitle presets.
59:57 – 1:04:24
11 · Step 7: Music
Music bin, rename audio tracks, set music to about minus 25, solo versus mute, cut the intro so the drop lands at frame one, fade out with the white dot.
1:04:24 – 1:05:34
12 · Export from the Deliver page
Name, location, QuickTime H.264, export subtitle set to burn into video, add to render queue, render all.
1:05:34 – 1:07:55
13 · Sponsor: 14 Day Filmmaker
Pitch for the 48 dollar course bundle with three programs, a community Q&A, and a revamped Resolve section.
1:07:55 – 1:16:02
14 · Advanced: custom text hook
Delete intro captions, add basic text with a white background, drop in the logo, Pop Wobble transition on both, Option-drag to duplicate layers, stack three word blocks staggered five frames apart.
1:16:02 – 1:19:44
15 · Keyframes and curves
Keyframe zoom and position at the start and before the swipe, open the keyframe editor, drag points, apply curves to both ends for eased motion.
1:19:44 – 1:25:15
16 · Cut out the background
Stack a duplicate of the clip, Add Alpha Output on the Color page, pen tool mask on the first frame, track forward, soften the edge, add a pack background underneath, reposition the subject.
1:25:15 – 1:30:10
17 · Template titles and subscribe graphic
Install a Content Creator Templates title, edit its text fields, tuck it behind the head, speed to 1.5x. Add the pack's subscribe animation at 200 percent with a rotated arrow.
1:30:10 – 1:39:20
18 · Clone yourself
Option+Y to select all clips forward, drop in a second take, Paste Attributes for color and volume, duplicate the clip, half-frame mask with light feather, three-frame opacity keyframe fade, close the gap.
1:39:20 – 1:42:40
19 · Overlays and a glitch transition
Film burn from the pack cut at full cover, both halves set to composite Screen, then a paid glitch transition from Content Creator Templates and a flash sale mention.
1:42:40 – 1:50:35
20 · Sound effects
Import the SFX folder as a bin, dedicated sound effects tracks at minus 10, pops on the apex frame, whoosh middle to motion middle, snapping off for precision, boing plus a music cut for the clone gag, crickets.
1:50:35 – 1:51:20
21 · Sign off
Export the same way as before, final 14 Day Filmmaker mention, subscribe ask.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
Roughly 95 percent of a DaVinci Resolve edit happens on the Edit page, so a beginner can ignore the other six pages until they need one specific tool.
Only two project settings matter for social video: timeline resolution and timeline frame rate, and the frame rate must match what the camera shot.
Resolve locks the timeline frame rate once you start editing, so set it to the footage frame rate before you drop in the first clip.
Editing at quarter playback resolution has zero effect on export quality, so lagging computers should drop it immediately.
Record audio around minus 12 dB and err low, because clipped audio is unrecoverable while quiet audio can always be raised.
Normalizing to a true peak of minus 1 dB fixes quiet talking-head audio in two clicks, no manual gain needed.
Punching in every other clip fakes a second camera angle and keeps viewers watching, as long as the eye line stays on the same horizontal line.
Paste Attributes copies zoom, position, color, and volume from one clip to many, so you only dial in a punch-in once.
Adding a transition to every cut is a beginner mistake; one Push transition with motion blur and ease in and out looks more professional than ten defaults.
A 12-frame transition on a 24 fps timeline is half a second, and that is usually the right length for social video.
Pack transitions like arrows and film burns only work if you cut exactly on the frame where the overlay fully covers the screen.
Auto captions are a Studio-only feature in Resolve, but a manual subtitle track in the free version can be styled at the track level once and applied everywhere.
Music sits around minus 25 to minus 30 dB under a voice track, and cutting the intro so the drop hits at frame one makes the reel feel immediate.
A keyframe is just two instructions, be here at this time and there at that time, and selecting all points and applying a curve turns the linear move into something that feels designed.
The free version of Resolve can mask and track a subject with Add Alpha Output and the pen tool, as long as the subject does not move much.
A clone effect is two takes of the same shot stacked, a half-frame mask on the top one, a little feather, and a three-frame opacity fade so the second subject pops in.
Sound effects go on the apex frame of an animation: pops at the peak, whooshes with the middle of the sound on the middle of the motion.
Cutting the music out for a gag and snapping it back in on the drop is a stronger joke than any sound effect on its own.
Takeaway
One page, seven steps, then the tricks.
WHAT TO LEARN
Nearly every Resolve edit lives on one page and follows one fixed order, and the advanced effects are just masks, keyframes, and timing rules stacked on top of that same timeline.
02Edit page tour
Stay on the Edit page. It covers cutting, keyframes, sound, and effects, and the other six pages only matter when a specific tool lives there.
Set timeline resolution and frame rate before the first clip lands, matching the frame rate to the footage, because Resolve locks it once editing starts.
Drop playback resolution to quarter when the computer lags. It changes nothing about the export.
03Step 1: Frame and color grade
A corrective LUT matched to the camera gets a log clip 90 percent of the way, and the wheels should only nudge from there.
Remember lift as shadows, gamma as midtones, gain as highlights, and offset as the whole image, and keep each adjustment small.
04Step 1: Audio levels
Normalize dialogue to a true peak of minus 1 dB instead of guessing at gain, and add a compressor on the Fairlight page to even out the delivery.
Record on the quiet side. Quiet audio can be raised, but clipped audio cannot be recovered.
05Step 2: Cut dead space
Cut every pause and bad take first, then tighten the remaining gaps so sentences run together at a natural pace.
Command+B cuts at the playhead and Command+Shift with the bracket keys trims to the playhead and closes the gap in one keystroke.
06Step 3: Punch in every other clip
Scale every other take up a little to fake a second camera, and keep the eye line on the same horizontal line so the cut does not jar.
Dial the punch-in once, then Paste Attributes onto the rest of the clips rather than retyping numbers.
07Step 4: B-roll
Drag the footage folder into the media pool so the bins mirror the disk, then pull B-roll with I and O in the source viewer instead of trimming on the timeline.
The higher video track always covers the lower one, and Option-clicking a clip's audio lets you delete the sound without touching the picture.
Grade B-roll with the same LUT as the A-roll and fix exposure with offset, then slow motion to 50 percent through retime controls when the shot needs weight.
08Before and after snap transition
Line up a snap transition by finding the word on the waveform, stepping frame by frame to the hand motion, and cutting both takes on that frame.
Use the Color page thumbnail strip to jump between clips and grade the whole timeline without returning to the Edit page.
09Step 5: Transitions
Use transitions sparingly. One Push at 12 frames with motion blur and ease in and out beats a default transition on every cut.
For any arrow, burn, or leak, cut at the first frame where the overlay fully covers the screen so the edit hides inside the flash.
Copy a transition, click the seam between two clips, and paste, then change the direction preset to follow the motion in the shot.
10Step 6: Captions
In the free version, build a subtitle track by hand and style it once at the track level, then override individual captions only when needed.
Keep captions short enough to read in a glance, splitting long lines on the word being spoken.
Auto captions and animated subtitle presets are Studio-only features, which is the main reason to pay for Resolve.
11Step 7: Music
Rename audio tracks, park music around minus 25 to minus 30 dB, and use solo and mute to check each layer alone.
Trim the intro of a music track so the drop lands at frame one, then fade the end by dragging the white dot.
12Export from the Deliver page
Export QuickTime H.264 from the Deliver page and check export subtitle with burn into video, or the captions will not appear.
14Advanced: custom text hook
A hook text block is basic text on a colored background behind the logo, with a Pop Wobble transition on each layer.
Option-drag duplicates any layer, and staggering stacked words five frames apart is the classic pro cadence.
15Keyframes and curves
A keyframe is a value at a time. Set zoom and position at the start and again before the next cut, and the software animates between them.
Open the keyframe editor, select all the points, and apply curves at both ends to turn a linear zoom into eased motion.
16Cut out the background
Add Alpha Output on the Color page plus a pen tool mask on the first frame is the whole free-version cutout, and the tracker handles the rest if the subject is still.
A little softness on the mask edge blends the cutout into whatever background sits beneath it.
17Template titles and subscribe graphic
Template titles install with a double click and show up under Titles, so a corner headline takes minutes instead of hand-animating text.
Speed up motion graphics in retime controls, 1.5x for a title and 200 percent for a subscribe animation, so they settle before the next cut.
18Clone yourself
Option+Y selects every clip forward of the playhead, which is how you open a gap to insert a new take mid-timeline.
A clone is the same shot twice, with a half-frame mask on the top layer, light feather, and a three-frame opacity fade so the second person pops in.
19Overlays and a glitch transition
Set film burns to composite Screen on both halves or the overlay just covers the picture in black.
20Sound effects
Give sound effects their own tracks at minus 10 dB, place pops on the apex frame, and align the middle of a whoosh with the middle of the motion.
Turn snapping off for frame-precise sound placement and back on for everything else.
Cutting the music for a gag and snapping it back in on the drop sells the joke harder than the sound effect alone.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
LUT
A lookup table, a preset file that remaps the colors of flat camera footage to a finished look in one click. Corrective LUTs are matched to a specific camera profile.
Log footage
Video recorded in a flat, gray, low-contrast profile that preserves more dynamic range so color can be pushed further in post. It looks washed out until graded.
Lift, Gamma, Gain, Offset
The four color wheels on Resolve's Color page. Lift moves shadows, Gamma moves midtones, Gain moves highlights, and Offset moves the entire image at once.
True peak normalization
An automatic volume adjustment that raises or lowers a clip so its loudest instantaneous sample lands at a chosen ceiling, such as minus 1 dB, without clipping.
Compressor
An audio effect that narrows the gap between loud and quiet moments by turning down peaks and bringing up quiet passages, so a voice sits at a more even level.
Punch in
Scaling a clip up slightly, usually 10 to 20 percent, so a cut between two takes of the same shot reads like a change of camera angle.
B-roll
Supporting footage layered over the main talking-head track to illustrate what is being said. In Resolve the higher video track always covers the lower one.
Paste Attributes
A Resolve command, Option+V on Mac, that copies chosen properties such as zoom, position, color grade, and volume from one clip onto any number of selected clips.
Keyframe
A marked point in time where a property such as zoom or opacity is set to a value. Two keyframes with different values create an animation between them.
Alpha output
A node setting on the Color page that lets a mask control transparency, so anything outside the drawn window becomes see-through and reveals the layer beneath.
Composite mode
How a layer blends with the one below it. Screen mode keeps the bright parts and drops the black, which is why light leaks and film burns are set to Screen.
Retime controls
Resolve's speed-change panel, opened with Command+R, used here to slow B-roll to 50 percent or speed a motion graphic to 200 percent.
Bin
A folder inside Resolve's media pool. Dragging a folder from the desktop into the media pool recreates its structure as bins.
Snapping
The timeline magnet that pulls clips to nearby edit points. Turning it off allows frame-precise placement of sound effects.
“Each one of these pages has its own layout, its own tools, and its own learning curve. And this is where 90 to 95 percent of the edit actually happens.”
Names the exact reason beginners quit and the exact fix in one breath→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
23:50
“If it's too high and you clip the audio, you're kind of cooked. It's really hard to get that data back.”
Blunt, memorable, and a rule people violate every day→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
30:34
“One thing that I love to do with social media videos is to punch in every other clip. This kind of gives it that look that another camera was recording at the same time.”
A single trick that visibly upgrades any talking-head video→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
45:29
“I actually don't like adding transitions to every single clip. It's actually a bit of a beginner mistake and it kind of takes away from the video.”
Contrarian to what most beginner tutorials sell→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
1:08:47
“There is a fine line between having it look good and professional and kind of like overdone and corny.”
Taste advice from inside a software tutorial→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
1:42:58
“What we're doing is looking for key moments and emphasizing those key moments with sound effects.”
The entire philosophy of sound design in one sentence→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
25:32
“The compressor essentially makes loud sounds quieter and quiet sounds louder.”
Clearest plain-English definition of compression→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
The Script
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
17px
metaphoranalogystory
DaVinci Resolve is the best free editing program for beginners. And in today's video, you are going to get a step -by -step tutorial covering all the important aspects so you can create amazing content for your social media, your YouTube channels, or maybe even commercials for your brand. And lucky for you, I'm bringing in a DaVinci Resolve expert.
This is Connor. He's a member of our team here at contentcreator .com. He's going to teach you everything you need to know.
So without any further ado, Connor, it's all yours.
Now, this video is long, but it's also incredibly detailed. And I went ahead and timestamped the entire video. So I'd recommend bookmarking this video so you can come back and revisit sections whenever you want.
This video was designed to be the ultimate guide for DaVinci Resolve. To set the stage for this video, we're going to do a full walkthrough on how I edited this video for social media. Now, I believe that practice is one of the best ways to develop a skill.
So I actually linked all of the footage from this shoot down below in a Google Drive that you can follow along with. I also linked a free YouTube video editing starter pack. that includes a bunch of assets that you can use to practice on this video or any video that you make in the future.
It contains LUTs, transitions, film burns, light leaks, sound effects, and a bunch of other video editing essentials. The link to this pack is in the description of this video as well. Even though the video that we're going to be making is a reel, everything that we're going to talk about in this video will completely transfer over to YouTube videos or really any type of content.
To start, we're quickly going to cover the layout of DaVinci Resolve so you know where all the important features are. Then we're diving into what I'm calling a level one basic edit. If you're brand new to DaVinci Resolve, this section will be perfect.
And then finally, we're going to kick things up a notch and do a really advanced edit of the same video. showing you exactly how to replicate a lot of those same trends that you see all the pro editors do online. And that does it.
So let's jump into Davinci Resolve on my computer here. When you first open Davinci Resolve, you'll see a layout that looks like this. Along the bottom, there are seven different pages.
And honestly, I think this is one of the biggest reasons why beginners get confused or intimidated by DaVinci Resolve. Because each one of these pages has its own layout, its own tools, and its own learning curve. So we're gonna go down here and select the edit page.
And this is where 90 to 95 % of the edit actually happens. You can cut clips, keyframe all you want, sound design, add effects. And this is all done from one place.
Now that we're in the edit page, let's talk about how this page is built. So in the top left, what I'm going to do is navigate over to media pool right here. And now that media pool is selected, this allows us to import our footage.
So there's a couple of different ways to import your footage. I think a super easy way is to just go to file. Then you can go to import and then down to media.
Now this allows you to select the file that you want to import into DaVinci Resolve. So if you're following along, navigate to the A -roll folder and select this clip right here, A0017055. And what we want to do is hit open.
And after we hit open, that's going to pull this footage into the media pool. Now, a quick note, you might see a change project frame rate notification pop up after you do that. All you got to do is just hit change for right now.
I'll explain why that is popping up in a quick second. Another great way to import footage into the media pool right here is to pull up where your footage is located. And if you have your footage organized in a folder like this, all you have to do is drag that folder and you want to drag it into this small little rectangle right here.
So I'm going to drop that. And what that did is just took the folder structure off of my computer and put that folder structure into DaVinci Resolve. So notice inside of Maserate now, now I have this arrow folder and this is where my footage is located.
This is a super easy way to import a lot of footage at once into DaVinci Resolve and keep it really organized. All right, so now that I have some footage inside of DaVinci Resolve, I'm going to talk about probably the most important part of this whole page, which is the timeline section right down here. So what I'm going to do is select a clip that I just imported.
And I'm just going to drag it down to the timeline just like that. Now what I can do is take this playhead right here and drag it across the video. And notice as I'm dragging it, it's also playing inside of this preview window right here.
Now a couple basic functions on the timeline here. If I go back to the beginning and hit spacebar on my keyboard, this plays the video. If I hit spacebar again, that pauses the video.
Another way that I can play the video is to hit L on my keyboard. If I hit L again, that plays the video at two times speed. As you can see, that is showing right here.
If I hit K on my keyboard, that pauses the video. And if I hit J on my keyboard, that rewinds the video. Now I could also go up to this button right here and play the video.
I can pause the video by hitting the square. I can rewind the video by hitting this button. And to go to the beginning of this clip, I can hit this button.
And to go to the end of the clip, I can hit this button. Now another really efficient way to navigate to the beginning or the end of the clip is to use our arrow keys. If I want to navigate to the beginning of the clip, I would hit the up arrow.
And if I want to navigate to the end of the clip, I would hit the down arrow. Now a couple other really great functions on this timeline is this slider right here. And this allows us to zoom out on the timeline or zoom into the timeline.
This button right here is a detail zoom. So if I click this, it's going to detail zoom into where the playhead is located. And this button right here allows us to zoom out and view the full timeline.
So if I click this, notice it shows the full timeline in the timeline window down here. Now let's say I want to trim the end of this clip. All I have to do is go to the end like this, click, hold, and drag in.
If I want to extend it, I can do the same thing. I can go to the end and I can drag it out like that. This also applies to the front and back.
I can go to the beginning of the clip and drag this in. Or I can select the beginning like this and drag it out like this. Now let's say I wanted to cut a section and delete this beginning right here.
All I'd have to do is select the clip and then I would go to this tool right here, which is the blade tool. I can click this and I can drag this over the playhead. Click.
And notice how that just cut the clip into two different sections. If I want to delete this part I would go up to the select tool right here. This kind of acts as the pointer so now I can drag stuff and move it around.
And to delete it all I would have to do is select the clip that I want to delete and just hit the delete button. Now if I want to move this clip around all I'd have to do is select it because I'm on the selector tool. and I can move it around.
If I want to move this clip to the beginning, all I had to do is select it and drag it to the beginning like that. Now, if you don't want to go to the blade tool every time to make a cut, a really cool way to quickly make a cut is to select the clip and then hit command B. And that's a cool keyboard shortcut to apply a cut just like that.
So if I go over here, select the clip and hit command B. Notice how that just made a cut right here. Pretty cool.
Now, if I want to delete this middle section right here, all I'd have to do is hit delete. And if I wanted to bring this over, I could select this and drag it over just like that. And that's pretty much all you need to know for cutting right now.
As we work through this video, I'll talk about a lot more cool tips and tricks. Now notice how when I select the clip right here, this tab opens up over here. If I go to the inspector tab up top, this is where I can adjust a lot of the things to the clip itself.
For example, if I want to zoom it in, zoom it out. If I want to spin it around and kind of adjust the rotation of it like that, it's pretty fun. I can go over here to audio and this is where I can adjust the volume of the clip.
For example, if I want to increase it or decrease it. And the last one right here is file. And this is cool if I ever wanted to rename the clip.
For example, I can rename this to talking head audio down here if I wanted to. For right now, I'm just going to keep it the same way that it is. I think that's fine.
And these other tabs up here, you don't really need to worry about too, too much. This is the metadata tabs. This tells you information about the file itself.
This next tab right here is mixer, and this pops up this window right down here. This allows you to adjust the audio levels of the clip as well. So if I wanted to close the mixer, I would want this grayed out up here.
And to get back to the video or audio adjustments, I would want inspector selected, and I would also want video selected for video. or audio selected for the audio adjustments. All right so next up we have this middle section right here and this is our preview window.
And the preview window is going to play the information that is showing up on the timeline right here. So if I play the video right down here in the timeline notice how it is showing up right up here. Some cool things with the preview window right here if I want to zoom in and I'm using a mouse all I have to do is scroll in on the scroll wheel.
So if I scroll in it's going to move into a point that I'm selected at like this. For example, if I want to scroll in over here, all I have to do is keep the mouse selected over there and just scroll in. So notice how if I go in over here, I'm kind of zooming into this area.
I'm going over here. I'm zooming in over here. If I'm ever like wicked zoomed in like this and I'm like, I don't know where I am anymore.
All you have to do is hit Z on your keyboard and that's going to bring you back to the fit view. Alternatively, I can come over here to this section and from here I can zoom in or zoom out to different parts of the video. For example, if I want to go in 300%, I can click this and that's going to move me in 300%.
If I go back to fit, that's going to bring me back to the full size right here. Now, a quick note, if you are using an older version of DaVinci Resolve, when you zoom in on the timeline here, you'll probably notice that no matter where you zoom in, it just goes straight into the video. So if you're on a version before 20, what you would have to do to move around the screen in here is zoom in, and then you would select this button right here on your mouse, push in, and now you have the ability to move around the screen.
You can also do this on DaVinci Resolve 20. I actually use it all the time when I'm drawing masks or doing more detailed work in the frame right here. One other thing that's worth mentioning up here is the timeline playback resolution.
This is pretty helpful if your computer is lagging quite a bit. You can actually reduce the quality that appears in the preview window to help your computer render faster. To change this, we're going to go up to playback.
Then we're going to go to timeline playback resolution. And here we can choose between full, half, and quarter. So if I click quarter, then hit play.
Adventure Resolve is definitely the go -to. Notice how the quality in the playback window is a quarter of the normal resolution. Quick note with this too is it doesn't affect the export quality.
So you can edit and one quarter quality, but when you export, it will export at full resolution. Now that kind of moves us perfectly into the next section right here, which is the actual project settings. So if you had that message that popped up and it asks you if you would like to change your project settings, I'll kind of touch on that right now.
So your project settings can be found in this gear icon right down here. So what we're going to do is click that. That's going to open up this master settings right here.
Now there are like a million settings inside of DaVinci Resolve. And honestly, there's really only a couple that we need to focus on. And that is timeline resolution and timeline frame rate.
All this other stuff, unless you're like editing for Netflix or creating some crazy epic movie. Probably don't need to worry about it. So timeline resolution is pretty self -explanatory.
It's the resolution of your timeline. Some pretty common resolutions that you'll see are 1920 by 1080. This is standard HD.
And the other one that you're probably going to see a bunch is 3840 by 2160. This is ultra HD. So be like a 4K timeline.
Both resolutions work perfectly fine. There's no wrong or right way to do it. I would say, though, that if you have an older computer or it's not like super built up like some of these massive editing machines, editing on a 1920 by 1080 HD timeline is probably going to be a lot easier on your computer.
When you're editing on a 4K timeline, it definitely does require a bit more power from your computer. So for now, I'm just going to select 1920 by 1080. The next cool button that they have here is use vertical resolution.
So check this out. Right now we have 1920 by 1080. If I click that button, look at what just happened.
Now we have 1080 by 1920. It just turned this timeline now into a vertical resolution timeline. Now, the reason why you would want to use this is if you were editing a video for TikTok.
YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels, any type of platform where you would want to use a vertical resolution. Now, because this is a vertical video that we're editing, I am going to keep this selected. So we want 1080 by 1920 and we want to use vertical resolution.
So the next really important one here is timeline frame rate. Now, DaVinci Resolve is a little funky. It actually locks this setting into DaVinci Resolve once you start editing your video.
And a general rule of thumb when you are selecting your timeline frame rate is that you want your timeline frame rate to be the same as the frames per second that you shot your footage in. If you shot your footage in 30 frames per second, you would want your timeline frame rate to be 30 frames per second.
If you shot it in 24, or in this case 23 .976, you would want your timeline frame rate to be in 23 .976. So because this footage was shot in 23 .976, we would want this timeline frame rate to also be 23 .976. As far as playback frame rate goes, we want this to be exactly the same as the timeline frame rate.
So after we get these two done, I'm just going to go down here and hit save. Now, when I switch to a vertical timeline, the preview window layout changed a little bit. That's because in DaVinci Resolve 20, they introduce an updated dual viewer mode.
And I actually kind of like it. It shows the preview window on the left and the timeline on the right. If you want to switch back to the single viewer, just go to workspace and then single viewer mode.
And if your layout ever gets messy, you can always reset everything by going to workspace and then reset UI layout. That pretty much does it for the basic overview of the edit page inside of DaVinci Resolve. Now, I do think it's a lot more valuable to see this stuff in action.
So that's exactly what we're going to do in the level one edit right now. Now, there are obviously tons of different styles of videos that you can create. We're going to be focusing on a super popular style right now, which are talking head videos.
This would also mirror a YouTube video. Now, if you had a different style video, for example, a travel video, the only difference between this video and that video would be you would just have more clips in your media pool.
So in that case, you would drag your clips in from your media pool, and you would just use the functions that we talked about earlier, like extending and deleting different parts, our selector tool, and you would drag them around on this timeline here to help tell the story. And then from there, what you would want to do is make sure there's no gaps.
So we would just clear all these gaps just like that. Make sure we only have the best parts in our video. And that's honestly how you would create a basic video.
Cool, so I'm just going to select all these clips, delete them, grab our talking head clip, drag this in, bring this to the beginning of the timeline, and awesome. Let's start in on the level one edit. All right, so the first step of this video editing workflow is going to be framing the clip up properly.
Then we'll perform a color grade on the clip. And then we'll do any audio adjustments if we need to. So if we look at the shot right now, notice how we have this light in the top hand section of the screen and the person is kind of low in the frame.
So the first thing that we want to do is move over to zoom X and start increasing the size. Notice how the light just went away as we're increasing the scale. The next thing that I want to do is move position X and move this over slightly.
And next I want to go to position Y and move this up a little bit. Perfect. Just like that.
Not too much. It should be pretty subtle. Now that we have our clip framed up, we can go on to the color correction section.
So this is kind of funny. I know how I just said that we'll spend like 99 % of the time inside of the edit page, but we are actually going to jump over to the color page real quick. So what I'm going to do is just go down here to color, click this.
Now this might look crazy, like a totally different screen. So I'll make this as simple as possible because it is a bit hectic if you've just opened this for the first time. Now going over everything on the color page is literally a video of itself.
So we're not going to do that. I'm going to explain the absolute necessities on what you need to know to color grade this clip effectively. Now the clip that we're going to be working with is a log clip.
And at first glance, it's kind of gray and flat and it doesn't look that great. But that actually allows us to pump a lot of color into this and make it look pretty sweet. So there's two different approaches that we can do to color grade this clip.
One, we can do it manually. And to be honest, it's just going to take a long time to do. Or what we can do is apply a corrective LUT to this.
It's going to get us to that end result way quicker. Inside of that footage download link, I included the LUT that we're going to be using in this video. going to show you how to install that right now.
If this is your first time installing a LUT, this is pretty cool because these things are awesome. I use them all the time. All right, so check this out.
Go to these tabs right up here, and the one that we're going to be searching for is LUTs. Once you see LUTs, just go ahead and click on that real quick. That should open up something that looks pretty similar to this.
Now all we have to do is locate this little folder right over here. there should be a little carrot dropdown menu next to it. So what you can do is hit that dropdown.
And then what we're gonna do is go down to Sony, click on Sony. And the reason why we're clicking on Sony is because I shot this footage on a Sony camera. And the LUT that you're gonna be installing into DaVinci Resolve is a Sony LUT.
Now DaVinci makes this pretty easy to install. So all we had to do now that we're on Sony is right click. And then we're going to go to reveal and finder.
Click on that. And that's going to open up this window right here. So now what we're going to do is pull up our folder that we downloaded for this video.
So you should have A -roll, B -roll, graphics. And you should see this one called Sony LUT. All you have to do is open up Sony LUT and you'll see this file right here.
Now all you have to do is select that file and drag it into the Sony folder right here. This is the one that we opened out from DaVinci Resolve. Now all we had to do is close this, close this, go back to DaVinci Resolve.
Now let's go back to that Sony tab right here, right click, hit refresh, and you should see that that just popped up right here. Now check this out. This is so cool.
Now all we have to do is go up to the LUT that we just imported, and it should start with CCT. And now let's just double click. And boom, just like that, look at that sweet color grade that just instantly happened on this clip.
Now, after doing that, it's gonna get us pretty close to the final result, but I wanna show you how we can make some small tweaks to this video. So what we're gonna do is go down to this section right here and look for this little dropdown next to this curve window. Click that and look for color wheels.
Click on color wheels. Now, if yours looks like this right off of the bat, All you want to do is just look for this little drop down so you have these options right here.
All we're looking for is color wheels. Now when color wheels opens up, you'll see these options right here. You have this small group of three icons right here.
One is called color wheels, one is called color bars, and one is called log wheels. Let's work our way over to color wheels. So looking at these wheels, we have lift, gamma, gain, and offset.
What the heck does all of that mean? So let's break that down starting on the left hand side. Lift controls the shadows of the video.
These would be the dark parts. Gamma controls the mid -tones. This would be skin tones or natural light.
And then gain controls the highlights. The highlights are the bright parts of your video. And then the offset moves everything.
So a way that we can think about this would be like a mountain. The lift or the shadows would be the base of the mountain. The gamma or the midtones would be the middle of the mountain.
And then the gain would be the top of the mountain. And then the offset would be the whole mountain together. So based off of how this image looks, let's adjust lift, gamma, gain, and offset.
So just by eyeballing this image, it looks like there's a lot of dark happening down here. Now to increase or decrease all I have to do is click and drag on this dial down here. So I'm going to go back by hitting reset.
So I'm clicking and dragging to the left to decrease. Or I'm clicking and dragging to the right to increase. To reset I can just go here.
So for this image I'm going to click and drag a little bit to the right. Honestly right there is good just a little bit as you can see that number barely went up with the gamma I'm gonna click and drag down a little bit So you can see it was just a little too hot on the face Just a little bit notice how these aren't drastic changes.
They're just pretty small with gain I'm gonna click and drag and see if I can bring a little bit of life to the face Perfect, just like that Just a little bit.
Cool. And remember, the offset is everything. So if I click and drag this up, notice how everything is getting brighter or everything is getting darker.
As far as offset goes, I'm actually pretty satisfied with this. I think this looks really good. I'm just going to bring down the gain just a little bit.
And I'm going to bring the gamma up a little bit.
And I think that looks pretty good. So as you can see with the color correction, very small tweaks. Now if the white balance of this image wasn't good, I can make it more orange by clicking and dragging this way.
I can make it more blue by clicking and dragging this way. I can make it more magenta by clicking and dragging this way. Or I can make it more green by clicking and dragging this way.
So a lot of different options in this color panel right here. But the main ones that we want to remember are shadows. mid -tones, highlights, and then everything.
And now that we have our color correction, let's go back to the edit page. So the next thing that we want to do is adjust the audio. What we can do is go up here to our mixer and we're going to select mixer and this is going to open up our audio levels right here.
So now we'll be able to see and get a good range of where these audio levels are coming in.
It's actually free. Okay, pretty low. That's not a bad thing when you're recording audio levels.
I definitely advise on the lower side than the higher side. If it's too high and you clip the audio, you're kind of cooked. It's really hard to get that data back.
Whereas if you record it a little low, you can always bring that up assuming that you don't have a lot of noise in the image. Really what you want to do is kind of nail it in that negative 12 sweet spot range when you're recording. But if you go too high or too low, I generally would advise to go a little bit lower than too high.
So right now this is coming in at about negative 20, which is pretty low.
negative about negative 30 so pretty low so what we're gonna do here is click on our clip right here and we're gonna right click by holding down control and clicking on the clip or just right clicking with a mouse I'm using a trackpad right now then we're gonna go to normalize audio levels We're going to click normalize audio levels and we're going to go to true peak on this drop down right here.
And we're going to go to negative one right here. And then all we're going to hit is normalize. So notice how these levels just shot right up.
Now, if we play this back first, it's actually free with incredible tools and no watermarks. And that just made a huge difference. Now our audio levels are up at a pretty good range.
Alternatively, what you could do is go up to the audio section right here and you can manually increase the slider. So if I hit command Z, that's going to remove the normalized audio levels. Now I'm going to manually bring this up and notice how these levels are going up down here.
So I'm going to bring this up to 20 .7. I can just select in here and hit 20 .7. Perfect.
Hit enter and boom, there you go. So we're just going to go over to the Fairlight page right here. And on the right hand side here, notice how we have this little mixer tab right here.
What we're going to do is go to dynamics. We're going to double click that box right here. We're going to turn on compressor.
And the compressor essentially makes loud sounds quieter and quiet sounds louder. So for example, if I'm talking really quiet in a video and then I'm talking really loud. The compression is going to help equalize that, so you're not going to have those massive swings.
Pretty easy thing to do in the Fairlight page, so I just thought I would bring it up real quick. So we're going to turn on compression right here, and let's go back to our edit page right here and play this back. First, first, it's...
All right, let's get a part where I'm not messing up. Second, Resolve isn't some basic editing tool. It's the same software used by...
Cool, so I think this sounds great. Now we can move on to step number two. We want to cut out the dead space and remove any mistakes.
So if I go back to the beginning of this timeline right here, notice how there's all these gaps in between the audio talking parts. That's because I was looking at my phone for the script on this video. I didn't memorize this whole thing in one take.
So as you can see, all these gaps right here is when I paused, got the line, delivered the line, and I'm sure there's a couple mess ups in here.
All right, looking at the script.
DaVinci Resolve is hands down the best free editing software in 2025. Cool. So what we would want to do now is go to the beginning line right here.
And what I'm going to do is use this tool and zoom in. Alternatively, what I could have done is use this, the detail zoom. And I'm just going to go to the beginning of this part right before I talk, select the clip, hit the blade tool, clip this, grab the selection tool and delete this.
Now if I zoom out you can see that we have this big gap at the beginning of the timeline. Now an easy way to remove this gap is to select this blank space right here and then hit delete. That's going to move the whole timeline to the left.
Now I'm going to actually detail zoom in real quick and I'm going to hit command Z and bring this section back. So what we're going to do is select the clip. And then what I'm going to do is hit command shift left bracket.
Now check out what that just did. It deleted the beginning part of the video that we didn't want and move this whole clip to the left. So if I zoom out a little bit, now you can see that that part is now at the beginning of the timeline.
It's a pretty cool shortcut and it helps move along the edit a bit faster. It's not even close. Not even close.
It's not even close. Cool. I kind of like this middle one right here.
So what I'm going to do is click into this section right here and I'm going to select the clip and I'm going to use our keyboard shortcut to quickly make a cut here, which is command B. And now what I'm going to do is drag this right over here because this is where the section ends right before I look at the script again.
Now, what I want to do is delete this part of the clip and move the timeline to the left. So I'm going to do the opposite of the shortcut that we just learned, which is command shift right bracket. So now what I can do through this longer gap section right here is I can hit L on the keyboard.
That's going to move it faster.
So a little mess up right here at the beginning. So now I'm just going to select here. First, it's actually free.
So now what I can do is select the playhead, drag this back, and I can select this section right here and hit Command B. Drag our playhead right over here and hit Command B. And this section right here is a section that we don't need.
So I'm just going to hit delete. Select this gap and hit delete again. Now I'm going to use our detail zoom tool right here and click in.
And notice how there's a lot of space in between these lines right here. 2025. Not even close.
First, so what I can do is select the end of this clip right here. It's a little difficult to do, but we're just selecting the end right here. And I'm dragging this over like that.
Now I can select this one and drag this over. I can select this one, drag this over. And this one, drag this over.
Now what I can do is just select these middle points right here, these gaps, and delete them. And now let's listen and see if this sounds a bit more natural. In 2025.
Not even close. First, cool. So a little bit faster, a little bit quicker pacing sounds a lot more natural.
And that's the process that you would do to build this timeline out. You would go through, select the gaps that you don't want. You would delete them.
You would delete the mess ups and the takes that aren't as good. And you just get this down to the best takes and all the sections that you want in this timeline. Because this is a bit repetitive, I'm just going to speed this up real quick and go through the rest of this process.
And now what we're going to do is move on to step three, which is punching in every other clip. So what I'm going to do is go back to the beginning of the timeline. One thing that I love to do with social media videos is to punch in every other clip.
This kind of gives it that look that another camera was recording at the same time. And it kind of makes the video more dynamic and keeps the viewer more engaged. So all we have to do is go to the second clip right here.
Now what we're going to do is make sure we have inspector selected. We're going to go to video. Now what we're going to do is just slightly increase this clip a bit.
I'm going to move this down to match the eye line of the clip before. For example, if we go here, we want to make sure the eyes are about on the same line. It would look kind of weird on the second clip if the eyes were like way down here, like going from this to that doesn't look very natural and vice versa.
If the eyes were way up here, going from this to that. It's a bit too jarring doesn't look natural. So we want to make sure these eyes on the same exact line, just like that is pretty good.
So now what I'm going to do is go to full extent zoom, select this. And this is the clip that contains our punch in. Now what I could do is memorize these numbers right here, go back to this one, double check cross reference, make sure everything's lined up the same.
Or what I could do is paste the same attributes. onto all of these clips just like that. It's a very easy way to apply settings from one clip that you want to many clips.
So what I'm gonna do is hit Command C on this clip right here. Now what I'm gonna do is select this clip, hold down Command on my keyboard and select this clip. And I'm gonna keep holding down Command and select this clip as well.
All right, perfect. So I have three clips selected right here. And now what I'm gonna do is hit Option V.
And after doing that, you should have this box right here. So what this box is asking us right now is what attributes from this video right here would we also like on this video, this video, and this video. So if we look at these boxes right here, we do want position, we do want the zoom, X and Y, we do want the color correction, and we do also want the audio attributes.
So all we have to do now is hit apply. If we go to this video right here, which did not have the attributes, and we hit play.
Notice how it just punched in to this one right here. Now if we go to the end of this one, hit play.
Notice how it just punched back out.
All right, cool. So the next step in the editing process is to add B roll. Now, if you're unfamiliar with B roll, think of B roll as the visuals to the story that's being told.
For example, if somebody was telling a story about the beach, that would be the A roll track, then the B roll would be really cool cinematic footage of the beach itself. So we have a couple different ways to get our B roll in here. My favorite way is pulling up the folder.
on your computer, and then dragging that folder inside of this little rectangle right over here. And boom, just like that, that organized it pretty well. So now we're inside of master right here.
And we have our a roll footage right here in our B roll footage right here. Alternatively, what you can do is go to file, and then you can go to import media. And then from here, you can locate that folder on your computer.
Adding B -roll to our footage is a pretty simple process. All we have to do is go to our folder right here, locate the clip that we want to use. And what we could do is just select that and drag that right onto our timeline, just like that.
Now, the way the timeline works is the video on top always has priority over the video on the bottom. So notice if I play right here, not even close. Notice how it cuts immediately rate to this b -roll clip right here That's because this clip is over this clip now the problem with dragging this whole clip in just like this is Notice how we have this really long clip and maybe we only want to use a very small section For example, if I just want to use this part right here to This part right here.
Now what I would have to do is cut this part and locate this and then drag this over Now we have kind of all this stuff over here and over here that we would have to delete. And it's kind of messy for a little bit and not the cleanest way to do it.
So a different way to do this would be to go to the clip that we want to import. For example, right here, double click the footage to select it. And what I could do is use our slider right down here and locate the part of the clip that we want to use.
Let's say I want to start with this part right here. What I'm going to do is hit I on my keyboard. And notice that just set an end point right here.
I'm going to play a little bit more. And I'm going to pause and hit O on my keyboard. So now I have a section of this entire clip selected between this point and this point.
Now all I have to do is just go on to this video right here and drag this in. Notice how it just dragged in the section that we selected right here. So now let's time up our video track to a certain point in our video.
So let's go back to the beginning. Hit play. DaVinci Resolve is hands down.
So after watching this back, I want to bring in a B roll clip right here. It's actually not going to be this one. So I'm just going to delete this one right here.
And what I want to do is look for a clip of the actual screen. So we are going to use right here, I think this clip will be great. So what I'm going to do is find the point where I click on DaVinci Resolve.
And I'm going to set an endpoint hit I and hit O. You can also drag the clip in from this area as well after setting your in and out points.
Drag this in just like that. Now on B -roll clips, you might have audio that you don't want. So what you can do is hold down option, select the audio track right here.
That's a really easy way to delete the audio very quickly from a track. So I'm going to go back to the beginning. DaVinci Resolve is hands down and I want to start the clip right here.
So I'm going to bring this in. And I'm going to extend this a little bit over so it snaps into place here. DaVinci Resolve is hands down the best free editing software in 2025.
So I think this looks pretty good. But what I want to do is punch in a bit on this clip right here. I want more of the logo.
I don't want all this other stuff in here. So I'm just going to resize this to make sure that that logo is right in the center. That looks really good.
Now notice how this clip is also a log clip. So very quickly, what I'm going to do is go back to the color page, make sure our clip is selected right here. We should see it up in the window over here.
And I'm going to apply that same exact LUT. So Sony, CCT, double click this. Now this clip is a bit darker.
So what I'm going to do is go to the offset right here and increase the total exposure just like that. And that looks much better. So I'm just going to go back to edit.
Not even close. First, it's actually free. with incredible tools and no watermarks.
Cool. So I know I want to add another video of DaVinci Resolve in here. So I'm going to play this video right here.
And inside of this B -roll clip, there's like this really cool transition that happens right there. I'm going to select this B -roll clip by double clicking it. Play this through with spacebar.
Now I want to go backwards a little bit. So I'm going to hit J on the keyboard. That's going to rewind this clip.
And this is a good starting point. So I'm going to hit I. Play the video.
And I'm going to hit O. And now that I have this selection, I'm going to select my B -roll clip and drag this in. And let's find out where we want to place this.
First, it's actually free. So I'm kind of talking about the tools right here. So I want to bring this in right here.
With incredible tools and no watermarks. For this section, I want to add two B -roll clips. So what I'm going to do is play this video right about here.
There's a really cool transition happening here. So what I'm gonna do is make a cut here delete this Bring this over to where I start talking about the incredible tools And then I say in no watermarks, I'm gonna take the end of this clip and remove this There's this really cool shot of me hitting the transition button So I'm going to hit I right here.
It's like that Oh, and I'm gonna drag this in right here Now you can see I have a little bit of a gap here. So I'm going to zoom in and I'm going to extend this out a little bit.
So these are flush. Incredible tools and no watermarks. Awesome.
And what I'm going to do is just hold down option, select these two audio bits right here and delete them. And that's essentially the process that we would do throughout the rest of this video for B -roll. What we're doing is identifying key moments and adding visual context to those key moments through the B -roll.
So just because this is a bit of a repetitive process, I'm going to go through and add more B -roll to this video.
So one thing I want to point out is with this b -roll clip right here what I'm going to do is make it slow motion and to make it slow motion all I have to do is right click on the clip and then what I'm going to do is go to retime controls. Another way that I can get to the retime controls is to select the clip and hit command R.
Now what I'm going to do is go to this drop down right here and hit change speed and go to 50%. Now we have this really cool effect and if I play this back we have this really cool awesome slow -mo shot.
So one more thing that I want to point out is with this clip right here, notice how when I play this video back just like this, the angle is off on the clip. So what I'm going to do is go to video and I'm going to go down to the rotation angle right here. And I actually want to rotate this clip back this way, 90 degrees.
Another way that I can do that is just select this box right here and hit 90. Now what I can do is go to zoom X and zoom this out a little bit, kind of scale this the way that I want it. So something like that is pretty cool.
What I'm also going to do on this clip is slow it down. So I'm going to open up our retime controls, hit this drop down, go to change speed and go to 50%. So I just got to this section right here.
Even pretty sweet effects like this. And what we're gonna do at this section is create a really cool before and after transition effect. So the concept for this transition is I'm gonna snap my fingers.
And when I snap my fingers, the visual is gonna change. So what we're gonna do for this transition is locate this clip right here, which is A0017061. We're gonna go to the beginning of this clip.
And what we're looking for is the first snap. So we wanna grab an endpoint right here. And just like that, we're going to grab an out point right there.
It's very quick. We're just going to drag this in. We're going to go back to this clip right here and we want to grab a secondary point here.
So what we're looking for now, if I scroll through this, this is the first section that we just dragged in right here and the lighting changes and let's grab a snap that we like. I like this one right here. Hit I.
Kind of funny. So I'm going to hit O right here. And now what I'm going to do is drag this in.
Cool. So we should have two snaps here. One is bad and one is good lighting.
So now what we're going to do is find the moment where I say effects. Been pretty sweet effects like this. Cool.
So effects comes in on this waveform right here. And we're just going to take a little mental note of where this is. And I'm looking at this window right here.
And I'm timing up the snap so right here. And to get super accurate, what I'm doing is hitting the right arrow key and the left arrow key to go frame by frame. So right here is the snap.
What I'm going to do is select this clip, hit command B, and we don't need that part right here. Now what I'm going to do is locate this clip. Commute that.
And let's find the snap right here. So right there. Perfect.
That's the snap. So now what I'm gonna do is hit command B move this over You can delete that we don't need that and let's line this up to effects Cool so effects comes in right here now what I'm gonna do is select both of these clips and Move this cut right up to the middle right here Perfect. And now we can extend this clip out.
So we have something that looks like this Even pretty sweet effects like this. And what we want to do is cut this second half right on this line right here.
So let's drag this and bring this back. This is a new talking head section right here so we don't want this to overlap into this section. Even pretty sweet effects like this.
That's awesome. So I just added in the rest of this B roll. I didn't go crazy with it.
This is just a level one edit. So now what I'm going to do is just quickly color grade the rest of these clips that need to get color graded.
One thing that I want to point out is notice how you have these two different timelines right here So this top one right here are the clips and this is a mirror of the timeline So what you can do quickly to jump between different clips is actually click them right here And that's going to bring them up from the timeline So if I just kind of click around like this notice how this is pulling the clip so I can quickly grade them Or what you can do is tap on the clips just like this And that's going to pull them up very quickly as well.
So I want to bring up this one right here because the white balance is a bit off. So what we can do here is go to our temperature right here. And we want to turn this a bit more orange.
Something just like that. Now this is a bit dark. So what we're going to do is bring up the offset just like that.
And I'm going to turn down the lift. I'm going to bring up the gamma just a little bit. And I'm going to bring up the gain.
Perfect, just like that. That looks a lot better. Now let's move on to the next step in the editing process, and that is adding transitions and effects.
So I actually don't like adding transitions to every single clip. It's actually a bit of a beginner mistake and it kind of takes away from the video. It can be a bit distracting.
But there are a couple of great transitions in DaVinci Resolve that I love to use. So let's apply one of those right now. So to apply a transition, what I'm going to do is go back to the beginning of our timeline right here.
And I'm going to navigate up to this tab up here, which is effects. I'm going to click on effects. And inside of effects, you'll have all these different options right here.
under Toolbox. So it might look like this. We want to navigate to Toolbox.
And right down here, you'll see Video Transitions. So after I hit Video Transitions, I'll see this long list of transitions that I have inside of DaVinci Resolve. So one of my all -time favorite transitions that I love to use is called Push.
So what we're going to do is go down to Motion right here, locate Push, select this, and drag this over the first bit of the B -roll clip so it looks like this. So I'm just going to zoom in a bit on the timeline so you can see that. This is what it should look like on the b -roll clip.
So if we play this from the beginning, this is what it looks like. DaVinci Resolve is hands down the best free editing software. It looks a little amateur right now, I'm not going to lie.
We can definitely make that look a lot better. So one of the ways that we can make it look better is to increase the speed of the transition. So what we're going to do is click on the transition just like that.
And this is where we can select the duration. So we can select this by seconds or frames. And in this timeline, one second is equal to 24 frames.
So if we wanted to make this point. five seconds, we would select frames right here and go to 12. Notice how that just dropped it to 0 .5 seconds.
So now if we play this, it looks a lot faster. We can even make this shorter and do six frames.
And now look how much faster it is. I actually think 12 is going to be really good for this. So let's go to 12.
Now down here under preset, we can adjust the direction. So push left, right, up. down, push left is perfect because we want it pushing into the frame.
Although I could go push up if I wanted it to go up. I could go right if I wanted it to go right. In this case, I think push left works best.
And now we're getting into the part which is going to make this look super professional. And that is motion blur. So notice how if we go over this transition right now, notice how there is zero motion blur happening.
And it kind of just looks like this. thing sliding in over the screen that doesn't look very good. So what we're going to do is increase the motion blur to rate around there that looks pretty good.
The next thing that we're going to do is go to ease right here. And we want to do ease in ease out. And this is going to create a really cool animation.
So now check out how this transition looks. I think that looks way more professional. All right, so I just got to this part in the video and I want to add a really cool transition here.
Specifically, the one I'm going to be using is from the free YouTube editing pack. And this transition isn't the only thing in that pack. There are tons of different assets that you can use, such as light leaks, film burns, sound effects, LUTs.
Plenty of stuff to create epic YouTube videos or really any type of video. Definitely check that out in the link in the description. So inside of the editing pack, what you'll see is this file right here, which is cct arrow transition.
So what I'm going to do is go back to media pool and I'm going to select master up here and I'm going to right click in this area right here. I'm just gonna hit new bin and a bin is pretty much just a fancy word for a folder and I'm gonna type in transition Hit enter double click on this. I'm gonna open up our free YouTube editing pack and I'm going to drag this in here Perfect.
So now what I'm gonna do is go over here into this section right here right click then select add track And that just added a video track, as you can see right up here, added a little bit of space above this video. Now I'm going to drag this in and drop that right here.
So you can move that down. It looked like it added another one. I can actually just right click and delete that one.
So with this transition, what we want to do is locate the point at which the frame is completely covered. And what I'm going to do here is hit command B. Now I'm going to go over and notice how.
Start to get exposed on this side a little bit. So I'm gonna go back one frame just like that I'm gonna select this clip hit command B delete this middle section right here move this over So I just connected those two together Select these two clips and move this right at the beginning of this clip So now what you should see if I zoom in Because you have this cut right in the middle of this transition and that lines up with the intro of this clip So check this out.
Now we have this really cool transition. That's definitely one of my favorite transitions. Super easy to do and I think it looks awesome.
So what I'm going to do is just go through the rest of this video and add a couple more transitions if I think it would help the video.
In this section right here, you can make any type of video. I have this clip where it's kind of rising and then it goes into this clip and it's rising as well. I'm going to go back to the beginning here.
click on this push transition. I'm going to hit command C and I'm going to go right over here. I'm going to select in the middle of these two clips.
So there was this clip and this clip. I just want to select right in the middle there. It should look green like this.
Now I'm going to hit command V. Now what that did is it just applied that same transition that we used earlier to this transition right here. Now it's going to the side, which isn't the flow of the motion that I want.
So what I'm going to do is click that transition and I'm going to go to preset right here and I want to make this up. So push up. So now let's check this out.
That looks awesome. Motion going up, transition going up, moving up into the other clip. I think it looks sweet.
All right, so we're moving on to step six, and that is to add captions. Now I do have to preface that adding auto captions in DaVinci Resolve is unfortunately only available in the studio version, which is the paid version. I know it kind of stinks.
Unfortunately, pretty much every platform out there has made this a paid feature inside of their programs, but I'll show you how to do it manually just in case you want to add captions in the free version. And I'll show you how to add them in the paid version as well if you have the paid version. So to start off with the free version, what you're going to want to do here is go over to this area right over here and you're going to want to right click.
And from here, you're going to go to add subtitle track and notice how we have this different bar. So we have video tracks right here. We have audio down here and then we have subtitles right here.
So to add subtitles, what you do is start at the beginning of the video, hit play, and then you would listen. DaVinci Resolve is hands down. Go into this area right here, and we're just going to right click and click add subtitle.
Now we would type this out. DaVinci Resolve is hands down. And that does not look great right there.
So what we're going to do is take some of this and hit command X, which is to cut. Perfect. So we have DaVinci Resolve.
Now I'm going to apply a cut point here because this is the end when I say DaVinci Resolve in the beginning of is hands down. Now I'm going to the end of when I say is hands down and I'm going to do another cut. Now I'm going to change the text for this caption to match what I say.
Perfect. So we would just repeat this process throughout the entire video and we would add captions where we want to add captions. Now, if I click on caption, notice that we have a couple different things going on in here.
We have caption track and we have the different captions down here. So if I want to get to the first one, I can click that second, third one. Notice how it's changing down here.
So I want to get to the second one. And let's say I want to change the font on all of these captions. So what I'm going to do is go to track right here.
And now I have the ability to change how this caption looks. And what we're going to do is change the font to, let's do something cool here. This looks pretty cool.
So we're going to select this font. Now what we can do is increase the size if we want to, something like that. I could change the color of the font.
For example, black. I could hit OK. I could change the stroke color.
And what the stroke is, is the lining around the text, just like that. So I can go something like that. I could change the color of that if I wanted to.
Make it strawberry. I could add drop shadow if I wanted. So if I wanted to turn this on, I can add white drop shadow here.
Hit OK. Increase the opacity. Change the offset.
Have that show up a little bit more. Something like that. Increase the blur.
Background is one of my favorites. So we can make this white background, something like that. And you have the ability to really customize these to your brand.
Now, notice if we go to this caption right here or this caption right here, the changes that I made just applied to all of these captions. Now, if I want to make changes to just one caption, all I had to do is select that caption. And then what I would do is go to caption right here.
And then I would check this box, customize caption. I'm going to check that. And let's say I want to make this one bigger.
Or actually, I want to make it smaller. Let's say I go really small here. Now check this out.
I have this caption. Then it gets smaller here. And then it gets bigger again.
So lots of different options that you can do. If you want to change individual captions, check this box right here. So now I'm going to delete these real quick and I'll show you how to do this automatically with DaVinci Resolve Studio.
So I'm going to delete this subtitle track right here. So to have DaVinci Resolve perform auto captions, what you would want to do is zoom out a bit. And then what you want to do is select all your talking head audio like this.
Then you would go up to timeline and then you would scroll down to AI tools. And then you would go to create subtitles from audio. Click that.
And from here, we have a couple different options. I'm just going to keep this on the default settings right here, as I think these are pretty good. And we're going to hit create.
And boom, just like that. Now we have some AI editing magic going on. And we have these awesome subtitles appearing right up here.
DaVinci Resolve is hands down the best free editing software in 2025. Not even close. Now, if I wanted to edit these, I would do the same as the manual process.
Click in here, track. We can adjust all of them. Caption, customize caption.
If I want to adjust a single caption. What I could also do is zoom in a bit. Let's say if I want to extend this out, we would treat this just like a video track.
I can extend this out, extend this out, extend this out, just so I don't have those gaps in between. So what I'm going to do real quick is go through these captions and make them a bit more aesthetic and off -brand.
All right, cool. So I think that looks good. Now what I'm going to do is just move these up a little bit.
That's pretty good right there. And I'm going to make these a little bit smaller. So that should be good right there.
And all I did was add a background and a little drop shadow. I also came up here and made the font case all caps. So another quick note about captions that I think is super important is the timing of the captions.
We want these to be pretty easy for the viewer to read. So for example, right here, if I just want first, not first it's, I can just delete it's just like that. First, go to it's right here, hit command B.
And then just type in it's right here. First, it's actually free with incredible tools and no watermarks. Cool.
And you would just repeat that process throughout the rest of these captions.
Now, I do want to make a quick note here. If you're using DaVinci Resolve Studio 20, there is a really cool feature in here that allows you to animate the subtitles. So I'll make this section really quick in here, but I just want to show you how you can do that.
So what you would do is go up to effects up here and then under titles. you would hit this dropdown right here, and then you would go to subtitles, hit this dropdown right here, and then you would go to animated. And these are some fun presets right here that you can apply to the track header that's gonna animate these captions.
So for example, let's go with statement. I think statement's really cool. Now what I'm gonna do is just drag this to the track header, drop it on just like that.
DaVinci Resolve is hands down the best free editing. Pretty cool little caption effect going on down here. Definitely makes the captions a lot more engaging and fun to watch.
Now, if we wanted to adjust this, this is really small and hard to see. All we would do is click on this. Again, we want to adjust the track, not the caption.
We want to do the track and we can make this a bit bigger. So let's just go to size. That's pretty good right there.
What we can do is just bring this up a little bit. Right about there is pretty good. So let's play this back.
DaVinci Resolve is hands down the best free editing software in 2020. Fun little tool that DaVinci Resolve has to make your captions more engaging. Now we're on to the last step of this video and that's to add music.
Now adding music is pretty straightforward inside of DaVinci Resolve. All you would do is go up to your media pool right here and then we would select master right here and we'd want to create a new bin. Just keep this nice and organized.
And we would just call this music. And then from there, we would double click into music and we would import music the exact same way that we would import any other video clip. We would locate the music track on our computer and we would just drag this into the music folder right here.
And then from here, all we would do is select the music track and drag this down to a two. One quick thing that is a super useful tool when it comes to audio is renaming these track layers. I'm just going to select in this little gap right here and drag this down to expand this just so you can see the names of these two.
So we have audio one, audio two. What we can do here is rename this by double clicking there, talking head audio, and we can call this one music.
Okay, so right away that music track is way too loud. So an easy way to lower the volume is to select the music track. And we're just going to come over to this section right here, which is volume.
And we're going to bring that way down. Generally, I've found negative 25 is a pretty good range for music. Again, what we can do is open up our mixer right here.
This is cool. As you can see, we have the music right here and we have talking head audio. So we'll be able to see the different levels as they pop up here.
The best free editing software in 2025. Not even close. First, it's actually free with incredible tools and no watermarks.
Second, Resolve isn't some basic editing tool. Cool. So that sounds much better.
I think it's complementing it very well in the background. It's not overpowering it. Now I'm going to go back to the beginning of the timeline and on the music track, I'm going to hit this button right here.
And the S stands for solo, which means now I can only hear the music track. For example, let me play this.
So notice you can only hear the music right now. You can't hear the talking head audio. Now, alternatively, I can mute the music track, which is this M button right here.
So now DaVinci Resolve is hands down. I cannot hear the music track. The music track is muted.
If I have nothing selected and nothing selected up here, when we play, they'll play together. Davinci Resolve is hands down the best free editing software in 2025. If I don't want to hear something, I'll mute it.
And if I only want to hear that thing, I'll solo it. So I'm going to zoom in real quick and notice how the drop comes in right here. So I'm going to expand this down so we can see this a bit more.
So watch for this first drop right here.
So this first drop right here is when the music really comes in. If I go back here, it's kind of audio and then some drums leading up into this bit. What I'm going to do is select the music track, hit command B, and I'm actually going to delete this first section right here.
I'm going to bring the music track all the way to the beginning. Now we have something that sounds like this.
So kind of right off of the bat, kind of gets right into it, has a really cool rhythm to it. And I think that's going to work better for the video. So I'm just going to hit this extend out button.
Now we can see the full timeline. And the last thing that we would have to do here is just take this end to the music and drag this to the end of the video. And what we can do here is go up to this white dot right here and taper out the music just like this.
So now if we go here, if you're serious about making videos this year, DaVinci Resolve is definitely the go -to. See how the music kind of fades out at the end there. That's this fade that we just added at the end by dragging this white dot out.
If we want to make it longer, we can drag it out this way shorter, it can be a lot shorter by just keeping it over there. But I think right there works pretty well. If we go in the middle here, we can kind of change the shape on how it fades out.
But for this, I think just a nice linear straight line down is perfect. Now the only thing left that we have to do is go down to this little spaceship right here. Click this, and this is the deliver page.
So what we would have to do is give this a name. We'll call this DaVinci Resolve. And let's pick a location.
We'll export this to the desktop. And as far as this other stuff down here, we don't have to do too, too much. So export video, QuickTime, H .264.
Good. Timeline resolution looks good. Now, if you added captions to your video, the last thing that we would have to do is go down to this little dropdown right here, which is subtitle settings.
And we're going to hit this dropdown down here and we're going to check export subtitle. Next, what we're going to do is go down to format and then we're going to hit burn into video. And that ensures these subtitle captions actually show up on the video.
Next, we would just hit add to render queue. That's going to show up right here. And then we can hit render all.
Okay, now let's go to where we saved that video, which is our desktop. And right here. The visual result is hands down the best free editing software in 2025.
And there we go. We have completed the level one edit. All right, now it's time to jump into the advanced edit, where we're really going to go deep on a couple of cool functionalities that DaVinci Resolve has to offer.
We're definitely going to be covering a lot here, so feel free to rewind or pause on certain sections. And if something goes over your head, don't worry, that's the nature of learning things for the first time. It'll just take a little bit of practice.
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Other than that, let's get right back into it. All right, so diving back into the advanced edit. The first thing that we wanna spend a lot of time on is the intro.
So we're gonna go back into our edit page right here, and I'm just gonna go back to the beginning. And currently this is the intro to our video. DaVinci Resolve is hands down the best free editing.
All right, so not bad, but we can definitely add a lot to this to make it more engaging. The hook is so important with short form content. So we really wanna make sure that people stop and watch this video.
Now there are tons of different ways to grab attention at the beginning of a video. But one of my favorites is by adding custom text. That's exactly what we're going to do right now.
To make room for the custom text, we're actually going to select these captions that were at the beginning of the video and delete them. Go to the effects tab right up here. And we're going to click on this.
And now we're going to go to titles right here. And we have a lot of different title options. We can scroll way down and we can see that there are some pretty cool like little comic book style text in here.
Some other really fun things that we can do to try to grab attention. Some of these are a little corny, I do have to say. So I would say there is a fine line between having it look good and professional and kind of like overdone and corny.
I'm actually just going to go right here to the basic text and I'm just going to select that and drag it in. just like that. Now to edit this text, what I'm going to do is go to title and we're going to start typing in our text here.
So DaVinci Resolve. Now we can make this a little bit smaller. Right about like that.
50 would probably be good. Maybe a little bit more, 60. And I'm going to go with Arial.
I think that's good. And I'm going to make this pretty bold. Very recognizable and I'm gonna add a background to this.
I'm gonna make this different. So let's go with Let's make this white and I'm gonna hit OK and Down here. I'm going to increase the opacity quite a bit.
No at the moment. We can't see anything So I'm just gonna increase the height and decrease the width a little bit Perfect right now that text is also white. So I'm gonna go back up to the top make the text black That looks pretty good, just like that.
And the next thing that we're going to do in here is add the DaVinci Resolve graphic. So I'm going to go to our graphics right here and drag in this DaVinci Resolve logo.
Now, this is a little bit too big right now. So what I'm going to do is make this smaller. And I'm going to drop this down.
And I'm going to select the text and drop this down a little bit. Go to settings. Just the Y.
Perfect. Something like that. So this is great because the logo is going to catch a lot of people's attention.
And the title is very easy to read. So DaVinci Resolve, boom, catches somebody's attention right away. And with the graphic there, I think that's a great combination.
So now if we go back to the beginning, DaVinci Resolve is. So this definitely catches someone's attention and stands out quite a bit. But what we want to do is make this text pop into screen.
So for here, we're going to go to video transitions and we're going to use one of my all time favorite transitions, which is a pop transition. So an easy way to find that transition is to go to the search bar right here and just search for pop. And then we can see pop wobble shows up.
So what I'm going to do is grab that and put that onto the beginning of this text clip. I'm also going to grab that and put that onto the beginning of this. image right here so now after we just added those let's check them out davinci resolve is hands down the best awesome so that looks way better definitely stands out and grabs your attention right off the bat now one thing notice if i keep playing this video right here see how this shows up over this b -roll clip that's because the b -roll clip is below our text and graphic layer right here so to get this above all we have to do is select this clip And we just want to drag it above the text and graphic layer.
So now if we go back to the beginning, it looks something like this. DaVinci Resolve is hands down the best free editing software. Notice how the B -roll is now covering up the graphic and the text layer.
So what I want to do next is on this transition right here, it's down the best free. I want to have something that says the best free editing software. I'm going to do this with text as well.
So I'm going to select our DaVinci Resolve text layer right here. I'm going to hold down option. I'm going to drag that right over here.
And that's a really easy way to duplicate video tracks, text layers, graphics, pretty much anything you want inside of DaVinci Resolve. So I'm just going to select these three and kind of fill this gap right here and bring this down. Move this over.
Now to change this text, all I'm going to do is click on the text layer right here, go to title, and I'm going to type the best. I'm going to make this all caps, the best.
Now I'm going to make this background a little bit more narrow. Perfect, just like that. And I'm just going to duplicate that text layer.
Free editing.
Extend this background a little bit. Now I'm going to duplicate that text layer one more time. Software.
And I'm going to make this a little bit more narrow. So these are all kind of stacked right on top of each other. So I can adjust the location of these.
So I'm going to move the best up a little bit. And then software down a little bit.
Awesome, now if I want to scale up all these, all I have to do is select all of them, and I can just increase them like this. That doesn't look great, so I'm just going to move it up just like that a little bit. Kind of adjust them individually now.
Now I'm going to change the background of free editing. So I'm going to select that, go over to title, and let's change this color to... Blueberry that's pretty cool.
Now. Let's make this background Let's make it black. That'll be awesome No, never mind.
You can't really see it at all Let's just inverse these actually so we'll do black background and for the text we'll do white There we go. That looks pretty good DaVinci Resolve is hands down the best free editing software.
Awesome. So I don't really want to cover up DaVinci Resolve in the background. So what I'm going to do is select all of these and go over to settings and move them all down.
Perfect. So now I can still see DaVinci Resolve in the background. I'm actually going to bring that B roll and just kind of make it a little bit higher.
Just like that. So now you can still see the logo in the background getting selected and you can see the best free editing software. DaVinci Resolve is hands down the best free editing software.
Cool. And I kind of want to stagger these text fonts coming in. So I'm going to go to the first one and then hit the right arrow key and go over five.
One, two, three, four, five. And I'm going to move this one over and then go over five more. One, two, three, four, five.
And then go over like this. This is a very classic technique that a lot of pro editors use. Now I can just even these out on the back end.
So it looks like this. DaVinci Resolve is hands down the best free editing software in 2025. Not even.
All right, cool. So this cuts to a different shot right here. So what we're going to do is select all these and move them back just like that.
All right, cool. So the last thing that we want to do on this intro section right here is a quick little zoom in on the talking head subject. And we're going to do that using a new term that we haven't talked about yet.
And that is keyframes. And essentially what a keyframe is doing is you're telling the software at a moment in time, I want you to do this. And at a different moment in time, I want you to do this.
So for example, let's say you want to increase the size of text, you would place one keyframe when the text is small. And then you place another keyframe when the text is big. And now you're telling the software you want to go from small text to big text.
So let's use that same knowledge of keyframes and zoom in on this video. So we're going to go to the beginning our video. And then we want this box to show up right here.
So we want to go to inspector. Video right here. And we are interested in these two buttons right here.
So zoom and position. Now what we're going to do is click this button right here. This is initiating the keyframe.
We also want this one right here. So we want zoom and position selected. Now what we're going to do is play the video.
And we want to stop the video when we want the last keyframe to be. So this would be right here, right before that swipe transition comes in. So let's now place another keyframe here, place one here.
And what we want to do is increase the size because this is the second keyframe. And we want to bring this down a little bit. We also want to bring this over a little bit.
And we're just kind of setting up our second point to how we want it. Cool. So something like that.
So now if we go back to the beginning of the video, check this out. DaVinci Resolve is hands down the best. Awesome.
So notice how the video was kind of slowly zooming in right there. Now that is pretty cool, but I want to kind of smooth out this animation a little bit more. So it's not such a linear straight line.
So we're going to go up to keyframes right here. Notice how this just opened up this keyframes animation window right here. So if we go back to the beginning of the clip.
We can see that this is our first point right here. So I'm actually just going to select all these, move them all the way to the beginning of the video. This is our second point right here.
Cool. So if I want to extend these out a little bit more, now the zoom would still be happening as that swipe transition comes in. DaVinci Resolve is hands down the best free.
Cool. So that looks pretty awesome. Just like that.
Now, how we can add a little bit of personality to this animation and not make it so linear is by going up to this button right here. We want to initiate keyframe curves. Now, I know this looks a little crazy, but to make this animation pretty cool, all we have to do is select all these points just like that.
Drag, select. And we're just going to go to this button right here. Perfect that just added a really cool curve.
We're gonna do the same thing at the beginning here So I'm just dragging and selecting these points at the beginning Hitting the same thing and now notice how we have this cool kind of curve pattern happening right here So now if I go to the beginning of the video check this out DaVinci Resolve is hands down the best for...
Now, we don't need to get super in the weeds with the curves or anything. That's just a really easy way to add some cool motion very quickly. So you just select the points, hit the curve up here, select these points, hit the curve there, and that's going to add a cool motion to your animation.
Not even close. First, it's actually free. This clip right here, we're going to do a really cool effect.
It's super trendy right now. It's when you cut out the background of the subject. So this is awesome.
You can do a lot with it and it's actually not as hard as it looks. So let's dive into it right now. So what we're going to do is go to the beginning of this frame right here, because this is the clip that we want to cut the background out on.
And I'm just going to select these clips and drag them up a little bit. One. Perfect.
I'm going to go up one more track. So just up one more like that. Awesome.
Now what I'm going to do is select this clip right here, pull down option and drag this up one. I'm going to drag this up one more. Perfect.
Just like that. Now what I can do is delete this audio. So I'm just going to hold down option, select this.
So now I should just have the audio selected and I'm going to delete that. Perfect. So now what you should have is this clip right here.
and this clip on top just like this now what we're going to do is select the top clip right here and we're going to go to the color tab right here so inside of this section right here what we're going to do is right click we're going to go to add alpha output select that and notice how that just added this little blue dot down here all we had to do is select this blue dot right here click and hold.
And we just want to connect these two blue dots. Boom, just like that. Now what we want to do is go down to the window section right here.
So we're going to select a window. And we're going to go down to our pen tool right here and select pen tool. So one thing to definitely note here is we want to be on the first frame before we start the mask.
So I'm just going to go and make sure I'm on the first frame right here. You can click and drag this. Make sure this is all the way to the left.
So this is where it could get a little tedious right now. We are going to draw a mask around this subject. So I'm just going to zoom in right here.
Perfect. And all you have to do is just zoom in on the scroll wheel by scrolling in. And we're just going to place a dot here.
And we're just going to start clicking around this subject.
Just like this.
I'm just going to speed this up real quick.
And once you finish up that frame right here around the person, what you're going to want to do is go down to the bottom here. You want to create this frame around the person just like this all the way down to the bottom and around. All right, perfect.
So after you have your subject cut out, we're going to go to this next button right here. click this. And what we're going to do is hit this button right here.
Perfect. So what that did is just tracked the motion of the subject just like that. Now, this is pretty solid.
It definitely works best if there's not a lot of motion going on. If you have like hands flying around everywhere, it's going to be really tough for the software to track this. Now, in the studio version of DaVinci, it is much better than the free version, but this is a pretty good result for the free version.
So now what we're going to do is go back to the window right here. And we're just going to go back to the first frame, make sure we're on the first frame. So now what we want to do to blend this a little bit is to increase the softness.
So we're just going to move this up a little bit, move this up slightly, and we can increase this slightly. It doesn't have to be a lot. We're just trying to increase the blend between this and what will be the new background.
So after we're done with that, we can go back to the edit page right here. And now what we're going to do is move this up. one more layer just like that.
And now we got to add a cool background for behind the shot. So let's go up to media pool right here and let's go to master, add a new bin right here, call this background. Let's open up this.
And inside of the free YouTube editing pack, I added a super cool background that we're going to place behind this subject. So open up the free YouTube editing starter pack and we're going to use this one right here. So I'm going to drag this in.
Boom just like that and let's grab an in point right here out point right here and now let's make sure that we have our background selected drag this in and we can extend this a bit and Check out this pretty cool background behind the subject right here. Not even close first It's actually free within now because this is a cutout.
We can actually change the location of this clip right here So what we're going to do is select this talking head portion right here, which would be the top clip. And we are going to move this down quite a bit, just like this.
We're going to move it over. Perfect. All right, so now that we moved the subject down into this corner, we have a lot of opportunity to do something super creative in this section right up here.
And what I wanna do in this corner up here is add custom text that says, first, it's actually free. But to be honest, I don't really want to go through the process of customizing all the text again. As you saw at the beginning of the section, that part does take a long time to do.
So I'm going to use a quicker method that gets a really professional result. I'm going to download a customizable title from Content Creator Templates. So once I'm on the site, I'm just going to go to DaVinci Resolve.
And then I'm going to go to title. And let's go with this one right here. I'm just going to download this.
And now to install this title in DaVinci Resolve, all I have to do is double click this file right here. Click install. Now I'm going to navigate to effects, toolbox, titles.
And right here, if I extend this, we can see that I have modern unique titles. So I'm going to click on this. And now what I can do is go through these and preview them.
I really like this one right here. So I'm going to select this. And drop this onto the timeline just like that.
And now what I can do is click on it. And right over here I can go to text. And I can change the text.
And I'm going to say it's. Then I'm going to go to the next box. Actually.
And then the next one. Free. Now I have a lot of different options in here.
I can change the font. I can adjust the size. I can adjust the position.
So I'm just going to go through this and customize it real quick.
Now I'm just going to move it into this corner right up here.
And I can delete these captions because we won't be needing these anymore. And the last thing I want to do is change this color.
And the last thing I want to do with this is bring up these layers right here. So I'm just opening up a little bit of space. Bring this text layer up one.
I'm going to bring this talking head layer up. And now I'm going to bring the text below the talking head layer. I'm going to bring this in so it ends up the same time as the talking head.
I can bring these back down. So check this out. I'm going to go back into the text layer.
I'm going to increase the size. I'm going to move it down a little bit and over. And now it's behind the head over here.
First, it's actually free with incredible. That looks awesome. Now, another thing that we could do with this text layer is go into controls and we could increase the speed.
For example, let's say I want to make this a little bit faster. I can go to 1 .5, hit enter, and now we have something that looks like this. First, it's actually free with incredible tools.
Awesome. So the text kind of settles a little bit before that transition. I think this looks really good.
And that took way less time to do than animating and customizing the text by hand. All right. So for this section right here, content, YouTube videos, because we talk about YouTube videos, I'm actually going to dive back into the free YouTube video editing pack and add a really cool subscribe animation here.
So I'm going to open up the YouTube pack. So I'm going to grab the subscribe motion graphic and drag this into background just like that. What I'm going to do is set an in and an out point.
Perfect. Now what I'm going to do is drag this right down here. So I want this to come in a little bit earlier.
Content, YouTube videos, even pretty. I'm just going to actually make this a little bit faster. So I'm going to hit command R.
That's going to open up retime. And I want this to be 200%. Perfect.
I'm going to get rid of the sound effects. So I'm going to hold down option, select the audio.
Go and I'm just going to extend this out a little bit.
And now what I'm going to do is select this. And I'm going to bring this up. And I'm going to make this a little bit smaller right here.
And I'm going to bring in a white arrow and have the white arrow point at the subscribe button. So I'm going to drag this in. Again, you can get all of these assets that I'm using right now in the free YouTube editing pack.
The link is in the description below. So I'm going to set an in and an out point here.
Cool. And drag this in. And I'm going to put this one above just like that.
Now I'm going to change the rotation. Have it point up at it and drop the size down just like that a little bit. I'm going to make this pretty big.
Really make this stand out. So now let's check this out. Cool.
I'm going to extend the beginning of that.
Cool. I'm going to extend this out a little bit.
Now, as we get to this section in the level one edit, we created this really cool before and after snap transition. But we're going to switch things up a bit in the advanced edit and create a really cool cloning effect. So let's jump into it.
So what I'm going to do is select these two clips right here, delete them. And what I'm going to do is go over to the A -roll section right here. And I'm looking for this clip.
So if you're following along, this one would be.
A0017027. And what I'm looking for is that line right here and pretty cool effects like this. And third, you can create any type of content, short form videos, long form videos.
So I'm going to hit I, grab my endpoint. Even cool effects like this.
Cool, awesome. I'm going to hit O here. Now I'm going to take this clip and drag this onto the timeline just like this.
And I'm actually going to place a cut point here.
So right when I say even, I'm just going to do command B to make it cut. Command B on this audio track, just like that. And on this text right up here, make sure everything is cut all the way up the middle here.
Now I'm going to select all these clips to the right of this point. And the best way to do that is to select all clips forward. So what we can do is hit option Y, and that is the keyboard shortcut for selecting all clips forward.
Now what we're going to do is just drag all these forward just like that. We can move them over pretty far. It doesn't really matter.
And we're going to zoom out on the timeline right here. So now we have this big gap in the middle. We're going to take our clip that we just dragged in.
And now what we can do is select this section right here. and delete the gap that's going to move this forward and snap to this point right here now we can use our detail zoom tool zoom in a bit and now what we're going to do is time up this line right here content youtube videos even cool effects like this all right cool so i know this doesn't look like much right now but it will look really cool so the next thing that we want to do is match this audio to this right here so we're just going to select this clip right over here, we're going to hit Command C.
And now what we're going to do is go to this clip, hit option V, that's our pace attributes. And we don't want zoom. And we don't want position, we do want color correction.
So we're going to keep that checked. And we do want volume. So now I'm just going to hit apply.
And boom, just like that, we just applied the volume and the color correction, even Cool effects like this. All right, so that's a little loud, so I'm just gonna bring this down to 19.
Even cool effects like this. Little bit lower, we'll bring it to 17. Two videos.
Even cool effects like this. Awesome, that sounds great. So now what we're gonna do, and this is where it gets really fun, we're going to duplicate this clip by holding down Option and dragging this up.
So same thing as before, we want to get rid of this bottom audio track. So just hold down option, select that bottom audio track just like that. And what we're going to do now is locate the second half of this clip where I kind of was acting like the other subject in the background here.
So we're just going to zoom out, drag this over a little bit, kind of locate where I came in there. All right, so it's not there yet. So I'm just going to hit command B on this.
So like this section right here, delete that. Move this over. Locate this.
So that's that's pretty funny right there. Let's check out this.
All right. Hey, command B, that one could be good. I do think I had a better take, though, of it.
So let's try to find that one. All right. Yeah, I come back in here.
That's so funny. All right. So this is the one that I want.
So I'm just going to grab this part right here. Command B, cut this, bring this over. And now what we're going to do is detail zoom in on the timeline.
And what we're trying to do here is match up to when I say cool effects like this. And on this, I want the ghost the clone subject to pop in at that point.
So I'm going to go like this, pop in just like this effects like this. So now what we're going to do is pretty much the same exact protocol as the last mask, we're going to go to color right here, we are going to go into our little node area, right click, add alpha output, connect the blue dots. We're going to go to our pen tool right here.
Now what we want to do is cut a little mask around the subject right here. So we want to make sure we're on our first frame here. First dot here.
And we just want to kind of make a halfway point around this. Just kind of like that. So this is a much easier mask.
Notice how when I just completed that mask, this person showed up here. The other person right at the bottom here. Now, what we don't want is the mask to go over the other subject right here.
Notice how it's all cut off. And we also don't want to cut off this person. So we're kind of like placing these in the middle, not cutting off this person, not cutting off this person.
And if we play through, we just want to play through and make sure at any given point the person is not getting cut off. So as you can see, the foot almost gets in there. So I'm just going to extend that out a little bit.
All right, perfect. That's pretty good right there. So it's still not cutting off this person, not cutting off that person.
That's pretty good right there. And we can just add a little bit of feather to this, not too, too much. If we add too, too much feather, see how it's like blending the two together.
So just a little bit of feather, something like that three could be pretty good right about there. So now let's go back to the edit page and see how this looks. Oh yeah.
So Notice how the the change is pretty drastic. You can see this line pretty good here.
So we probably will have to blend this quite a bit more.
Move that over. All right, let's check out this. Hopefully this works.
Yeah, that's not bad right there. So let's check this out like this. Effects like this.
That's pretty funny there. I can extend this out a little bit and.
That's pretty funny. All right, cool. So I'm just going to go to the end of this frame, cut this.
So now we have these ending at the same time. The person kind of scurries off frame a little bit. And to kind of blend in, see how harsh this is?
It's kind of coming in very harshly. You can see these lines a little bit. What we're going to do is fade this person in using an opacity on this side.
Go to the the first frame on this clip right up here and we're gonna go to Opacity notice how we have the opacity right here. We have our keyframe tool right here, which is great So we're just gonna click that bring this all the way to zero and now we're just gonna tab over Three frames. Let's try that one two three We're gonna bring that up to a hundred And that just auto place another keyframe because the software knows that we're trying to keyframe something right now.
So let's see if this kind of helps a little bit. Yeah, that definitely helps. It definitely helps.
The only thing that's off right here is the lighting change right up here. But for a social media video, no problem at all. I think it works great.
So now we have this really big gap right here. If I zoom out so we can see the whole timeline, we have this really big gap. And to get rid of this gap, we're just going to select into this, hit delete, and that's going to move it all over.
Even pretty sweet effects like this. So we don't need that line anymore. So all I'm going to do is move this over, try to keep these captions lined up over here because this is where they would be coming in.
We can select this clip because we don't need it anymore. I'm actually going to delete this part of the music. Bring this back.
And now I'm just going to bring the music back over, fade that back out. Now it's pretty much exactly the same videos, even cool effects like this. All right, that's awesome.
I love that. And one more thing that I want to add to this video that I think you guys will absolutely love are overlays. Now there's one overlay in particular that I absolutely love using, and I'm going to apply it right here.
The overlay that I'm going to use is this film burn. This is a really popular trend that you see all the time online. Again, this is from the free YouTube editing pack.
You get all this stuff for free. It's pretty awesome. So definitely check that out.
Link in the description. So we're going to go to background right here. Drag this in.
Drop it right there. We're going to set an in point. I want it right before that big first flare up right before that one.
So I'm just going to hit I. And oh, right there. And with these film burns, what you want to do is treat it like the arrow transition that we did earlier.
And what you want is when the full frame gets covered up by light. So right there, we're going to hit command B. We're going to move over right before it starts to break out just like that.
So that would be the frame where it starts to break out. So we just got one back. Now it's still all the way covered up.
And I'm going to hit command B, delete that, drag this over. And I'm going to match up this midpoint to the end right here. So drag that over just like that.
So now we have something like this. All right, we're halfway done. I forgot about the most important part.
And that is to actually blend these two together. So select the first one. And what we're going to do here is go to composite.
And what we want to do is set this to Screen right down here. So composite we want screen and for the second one.
We also want screen Perfect just like that. So now it looks something like this Awesome probably see that all the time online Definitely one of the go to transitions.
I love the way that that looks. Now, right here, I want to add a glitch transition. I think this will be probably the last transition that I do before the video ends.
And I'm an absolute huge fan of glitch transitions. And I have this really cool one that I want to use right here. So all I'm going to do is go to effects under toolbox, go to transitions, and I'm going to drag and drop this one in here.
And I'm going to increase the speed a little bit. So it looks like this. Super cool, very subtle.
Now, unfortunately, this transition isn't available in DaVinci Resolve. This one was actually downloaded from Content Creator Templates. It's one of my absolute favorites.
There's so many epic DaVinci Resolve transitions on content creator templates that you can use to do the same effect manually inside of DaVinci Resolve would take quite a bit of time to be able to get all the glitching and all the effects like this. DaVinci Resolve definitely does have some pretty cool transitions built into it.
But if you kind of want to level up your videos, the templates that you'll find on content creator templates will definitely get the job done. Now, unfortunately, I can't link this one in the free pack, but if this is something that you're interested in, we have a crazy flash sale going on right now for content creator templates.
That is in the link below, so definitely check it out. All right, so now we're gonna move on to the last step of this process, and that is to add sound effects. Definitely one of the best ways to level up your videos and take them from good to great is by adding sound effects.
So what we're gonna do is go to the beginning of this video. And with sound effects, it's pretty straightforward. What we're doing is looking for key moments and emphasizing those key moments with sound effects.
So we're going to play the video. And right off the bat, we have this really cool pop going on. So if we pull up our free YouTube editing sound effect pack, you'll see that we have this folder called CCT SFX.
And inside of that, we have a pop sound effect. So we're going to use that for this video. So I'm going to go to media pool right here.
I'm going to go to master. And what I'm going to do is drag this whole folder and drop this right in here. Boom.
So now you can see that we have a roll B roll transition music background and CCT SFX. So what we're going to do is look for paw.
Perfect. So let's grab this. And all we have to do is come down here right below our music track.
And we're just going to drop that in there. Now what I'm going to do is extend this down a bit. It's a little funky when you get a lot of tracks going on down here, it becomes a little difficult, but I'm just going to move this one up a little bit, move this up a little bit.
Perfect. And I'm going to rename this, call this sound effects. So we're going to put all of our sound effects on a three and I'm going to punch in a little bit more.
So now we can see our sound wave right here. What I'm going to do is go over frame by frame and look for that apex moment of the animation right here. So it pops up right here.
Now what I'm going to do is drag this over and notice how it's kind of snapping around right here. If we want to get more accurate with the timing of the sound effect, what we can do is click on the magnet right here and notice how we are able to move this over a bit more accurately. So I'm going to move this right here.
I like snapping so I'm gonna turn this back on but the sound effects gonna be a little loud in the background so I'm going to go up to our audio tab right here and I'm gonna bring this down to negative 10 hit enter so let's go back to the beginning and check this out the more I'm listening to the music I think it's a little too loud so I'm gonna select this and go to negative 30 DaVinci Resolve is hands down the best.
Awesome. So now what we have is this little slide coming in here. So we're going to go to CCT SFX and we're going to look for whoosh.
Awesome. That's what we want. So we're going to drag this down to our sound effects.
And with whooshes, what we're trying to do is time the middle of the whoosh to the middle of the motion. So this is the middle of the motion right here. And this big peak right here would be the middle of the whoosh.
So we're going to select this, move them over like that. Select the volume, move that down to negative 10. Perfect.
And we have these pops coming in right here. So what we're going to do is time these up. And we might need a couple more sound effect tracks down here.
If we dropped a pop right here, this would... cover up the sound effects so if i went like that see how we're cutting into the whoosh right here we definitely would not want that so what i'm going to do is right click down here and i'm going to hit add tracks and now it's asking the number of video tracks we want zero and now it's asking the number of audio tracks so we want two perfect so zero two and we want this below sound effects So we're going to hit add tracks.
Now we can scroll down. We can see we have a couple more tracks down here. So I'm going to add in pop.
I'm going to expand this one down. Bring this up. Perfect.
Expand this down.
Zoom in quite a bit. I'm going to release snapping for a second to move that over. Drop this down to negative 10.
And now I'm going to go over. to the next one. So that's the impact moment.
And now I can just duplicate this pop. So I'm going to hold down option, drag this over. I'm going to turn off snapping again.
Perfect. I'm going to go over. So that's the peak moment right there.
Duplicate by holding down option, dragging this over. So now if I expand this and I go back and play, this is what it looks like from the beginning. DaVinci Resolve is hands down the best free editing software in 2025.
Cool. And that's pretty much the basis for sound effects. We would repeat that same process through the rest of the video.
So I'm just going to go through real quick and add a bunch of sound effects in here.
And for this moment right here, I'm going to add a really funny sound. It's called boing. If I play this.
I think it's just got to be perfect. So what I'm going to do is drag this in and drop this right here. So I want the Boeing to start at the front of the moment where the subject, the second subject kind of pops in there.
So what I'm going to do is lower the volume here to like negative five. Play this effects like this. And one thing that I think would be really powerful here as well is to actually cut the music.
And right when the boing comes in on the music track, I'm just going to hit command B. So make sure the music track is selected, cut that. And I'm just going to solo out the music real quick.
So notice how the music kind of drops back in right here. Awesome. So what I'm going to do is make a cut there.
Delete this section right here because we don't need it and I'm going to go and bring this music I want to turn snapping back on and I want to snap this music on the drop back in when this little like kind of funny scene is done So now let's play this back and see how it looks even cool effects like this Yes, sound effects are so great.
I'm actually just gonna go to content creator templates real quick go to sound effects and I have this funny idea. I'm just gonna get crickets Alright, so I'm gonna download this one right here So I'm just gonna drag this in here and I'm gonna set an endpoint Cool and I'm gonna drag this over here And I'm gonna move this down one more layer extend this over Kind of fade this out move this to negative 10 And let's start this right about here cool effects like this Let's make this really low in the background we'll do negative 25 and let's check out how this sounds Cool effects like this Perfect I love that Awkward crickets and all we would do from here is hit that rocket ship Go to the deliver page and do the same exact settings that we did in the previous version And that officially does it for the super advanced edit where we really dove into all of the advanced features that DaVinci Resolve has to offer.
Now, I know I threw a ton at you in that video, but hopefully there was something in there for all skill levels, the beginners all the way up to the super advanced editors. If you found this content valuable, definitely check out the 14 day filmmaker bundle from contentcreator .com. I think you'll absolutely love that program.
Other than that, hit the subscribe button and I'll see you in the next one.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The founder opens with a claim and a handoff: Resolve is the best free editor, and a team member named Connor will teach all of it. Connor immediately reframes the next two hours as a bookmarkable manual, hands over the raw footage and a free asset pack so you can edit the exact same reel, and promises the same video cut twice, once for beginners and once with every trend pro editors use.
Frameworks
Named ideas worth stealing.
15:43list
The seven-step level one edit
Frame, color grade, and fix audio
Cut dead space and mistakes
Punch in every other clip
Add B-roll
Add transitions and effects
Add captions
Add music, then export
The same order is used for the beginner edit and as the skeleton the advanced effects are layered onto. Doing the steps in this sequence avoids re-grading or re-timing work that later steps would undo.
Steal forA checklist pinned next to the monitor for every talking-head edit
20:51model
The mountain model of color wheels
Lift = base of the mountain (shadows)
Gamma = middle (midtones, skin)
Gain = peak (highlights)
Offset = the whole mountain
A memory device for the four primary wheels on the Color page. Adjustments after a corrective LUT should be small nudges, not swings.
Steal forTeaching anyone the Color page in sixty seconds
07:08list
Resolve shortcut kit
Space or L play, K pause, J rewind, L twice for 2x
Up and down arrow to clip start and end
Z to fit the preview
Command+B blade at playhead
Command+Shift+[ and ] ripple trim to playhead
I and O set in and out points
Option-click to select only the audio
Option-drag to duplicate anything
Option+V Paste Attributes
Option+Y select all clips forward
Command+R retime controls
Every shortcut the tutorial uses, in the order they appear. Together they replace almost every trip to the toolbar.
Steal forA one-page cheat sheet for the first week in Resolve
49:37concept
Overlay transition timing rule
For any arrow, film burn, or light leak transition, find the first frame where the overlay fully covers the screen, cut both the overlay and the underlying clips there, and set burns and leaks to composite Screen. The cut is hidden inside the flash.
Steal forAny pack transition in any editor
1:44:19concept
Sound effect placement rule
Pops land on the apex frame of the animation. Whooshes align the loudest middle of the sound with the middle of the motion. Everything sits around minus 10 dB on its own track so it never fights the voice.
Steal forSound design on motion graphics in any tool
1:19:44list
Background cutout recipe
Duplicate the clip onto the track above and delete its audio
Color page: right click the node, Add Alpha Output, connect the blue dots
Window, pen tool, draw the mask on the first frame
Tracker: track forward
Raise softness slightly to blend
Drop a background on the track below and reposition the subject
A free-version subject cutout that holds up when the subject is fairly still. Studio tracks better but the free result is fine for social.
Steal forAny corner-subject or floating-head reel layout
CTA Breakdown
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
1:05:34product
“At contentcreator.com, we have an online course bundle called 14 Day Filmmaker. It only costs $48 and it contains hundreds of videos that walk you through the step-by-step process of learning how to shoot and edit professional videos.”
Placed at the seam between the beginner and advanced edits, after an hour of delivered value, and framed as the sponsor of the video even though it is the channel's own product. Stacked with a 100,000-student proof point, three bundled programs, a community Q&A, and a freshly revamped Resolve section. The free starter pack is mentioned repeatedly as a soft funnel, and the paid template store gets a flash-sale plug near the end.
Add Modern Creator as a preferred source and Google shows you more of our breakdowns in Search, Top Stories, and AI Overviews. It only changes what you see, and you can undo it in your Google settings anytime.
Add to Preferred SourcesOpens your Google source preferences with us pre-loaded. Tick the box and you're done.
A 45-minute screen-recorded tour of DaVinci Resolve's built-in AI tools, a reusable project template, and the shortcuts that turn editing into a five-step habit instead of a slog.
An 85-minute walk-through from empty DaVinci Resolve project to finished exported vertical short — color graded, trimmed, captioned, b-rolled, and music-bedded.
A 16-minute breakdown of the three-part framework — composition, lighting, audio — plus the camera settings secret that separates phone footage from a Netflix scene.
A 20-minute tutorial that proves gear is the smallest variable — and shows you exactly how to build a professional-looking talking-head setup for under $100.
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1:25:26
18:22
21:16
Video of the Day16:48
20:41